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How a simple gesture could completely change impressions of a project

If you know your science fiction, you know of Ender’s Game (and if you haven’t read it, you should). What you may not know is that Ender’s Game is being adapted into a film written and directed by Gavin Hood (of Tsotsi and X-Men Origins: Wolverine). The team has been keeping some good notes on the progress of the film, posting production stills, props and set shots. In the most recent post, they took a more interactive turn:

“I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven’t seen yet.”

In Dragon Army, Ender encourages input. So do we. That’s why we’re opening this blog up to you, the readers.

Ask us a question about ENDER’S GAME — something you’ve been dying to know. We’ll select our favorites (or as many as we can) from the comments section and start answering them.

Fire away!

This is a really interesting and admirable way to approach production, marketing, and (most importantly) your fans. By making the production a little more interactive, they’ve also given their most loyal fans more insight into the process. Now, the production team gets a sense of what their fans are expecting and hoping for and the fans get to learn more about the movie they’re eagerly anticipating.

This seems like a really great idea to incorporate into games. I’m not referring to betas. Betas are nearly-finished products, this would probably happen at the early stages of development. The simple question and answer process would give developers an opportunity to demonstrate respect, quell fears, and exceed expectations. The kind of people that would follow a production blog would probably be some of the most devoted fans and have the most relevant, thoughtful questions.

Rather than just the developer meting out information about the game down a one-way street, this kind of conversation would give both parties better expectations about the project.